Handshake, a LinkedIn for university students and diversity, raises $40M

LinkedIn has created and — with 562 million users — leads the market in social platforms for people who want to network with others in their professions, as well as look for jobs. Now a startup that hopes to take it on in a specific niche — university students and recent grads, with a focus on diversity and inclusion — has raised a substantial round to grow. Handshake, a platform for both students looking to take their early career steps and employers that want to reach them, has raised $40 million in a Series C round of funding, after hitting 14 million users in the U.S. across 700 universities, and 300,000 employers targeting them.

The company is now valued at $275 million post-money, according to figures from PitchBook, a big leap on its valuation at the Series B stage two years ago, when it was valued at $108 million. A source very close to the company says $275 million was just a little high, but close. 🤷

The funding is notable not just for that valuation hike — and the implication that many think it could give Microsoft-owned LinkedIn a run for its money among 20-somethings — but for who is doing the backing.

The round was led by EQT Ventures, the investment arm of European holding company and PE firm EQT, with participation also from several investment organizations that have put a focus on backing interesting startups in the education sphere, including the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, Omidyar Network and Reach Capital, as well as True Ventures, Kleiner Perkins, Lightspeed Venture Partners, Spark Capital and KPCB Edge. Several of these are repeat investors, and the total raised by Handshake — not to be confused with the B2B e-commerce platform of the same name — is now $74 million.

Recommended For You

Omar and Melinda Martinand#39;s highly regarded flagship product contains everything an internet marketer needs under one roof. This membership site includes LIVE weekly coaching webinars and hundreds of archived episodes. Includes access to core products and

To date, Handshake has only been active in the U.S. Originally named Stryder, the company was founded in 2014 by three graduates of Michigan Tech University University of Michigan — Garrett Lord (currently the CEO), Scott Ringwelski (CTO) and Ben Christensen (a board member). The plan is to use the new funding to expand into more markets like Europe, using EQT’s network of businesses in the region to help it along.

LinkedIn has been making a lot of efforts over the years to court younger users and bring them into the LinkedIn fold earlier.

In 2013, the company lowered its minimum age for users to 13 and launched dedicated pages for universities. In 2014, LinkedIn started to add more tools for younger users to connect with universities and their university-related networks on the platform. And through various e-learning efforts, LinkedIn has been trying to create a bridge between the kind of learning you might do at university and what you might do after you leave to further your career.

The behemoth also started to take baby steps into providing more insights into diversity for those doing hiring, by letting recruiters examine search results by gender; and by providing bigger insights into the wider pool of people on LinkedIn.

Part of the reason for the baby steps, I’m guessing, is that LinkedIn simply lacks the data from its users to do more faster, and so that leaves a lot of room for a rival to step in.

In that vein, it seems Handshake is trying to position itself as a platform that is considering and thinking about how to address diversity from the ground up, as a native part of its platform while it is still small and growing.

Discover what it takes to conduct live webinars that pull in 20%+ conversions and 5 or even 6 figures in sales in just a couple hrs.

One of the ways that Handshake gets more details about its members is through its partnerships with universities, which helps to populate information about their profiles, rather than relying on a person filling out the details manually. (To register for an account, you use your university address, similar to how Facebook worked when it first launched.)

Handshake also has relationships with more than 100 minority-serving institutions, which include Historically Black Colleges and Universities, and Hispanic Serving Institutions in the U.S., to bring them and their students more closely into that fold.

On the side of employers, it includes more search features for recruiters to search using more specific parameters in the effort to make more diverse hiring choices. “Candidates who might not have the right connections or privileged background can get in front of Fortune 500 companies,” the company notes.

“Our Handshake community is tackling the so-called ‘pipeline problem’ head on. Skilled students are on every campus in every corner of the country and we’re proud to help employers discover, recruit and hire up-and-coming talent from all backgrounds,” said Lord in a statement. “Students around the world experience the same inequality in the recruiting process, so we’re excited to partner with Alastair Mitchell” — the EQT partner leading the investment — “and EQT Ventures to expand our impact beyond the United States.”

That’s not to say that inclusion and diversity are the only issues that Handshake is tackling.

The company cites a 2018 Strada-Burning Glass Study that says more than 43 percent of graduates are underemployed — either not earning their full potential, or doing a job that doesn’t utilize their skills — in their first job out of college. “Of those who graduate underemployed, 50% remain underemployed 10 years after graduation.” There is, in other words, a big employment gap specifically with recent grads, and while many will land plum positions, many others flail, and the idea is that Handshake will help specifically to address that by improving how well people are matched to positions that are open.

This is, in fact, an interesting counterpoint to the fact that we also have a lot of ageism in certain fields, where older people are often overlooked — perhaps another niche market that is ripe for tackling?

Handshake today makes money much in the same way that LinkedIn does: it offers paid usage tiers for its users to unlock more features. In the startup’s case, a Premium employer tier called the Talent Engagement Suite was recently launched to let organizations search by diversity parameters and other more specific criteria. That appears to be the path that Handshake plans to follow going ahead, doubling its team to 200 with more people in product and engineering roles to build out more analytics and search and recommendations algorithms.

It’s also making some key hires for the next age. Christine Y. Cruzvergara, ex-associate provost and executive director for Career Education at Wellesley College, is joining as VP of Higher Education and Student Success, to work with institutions precisely on more inclusive initiatives and products.

“CZI is thrilled to support Handshake as it connects talented students to career opportunities that enable them to reach their full potential,” said Vivian Wu, managing partner of Ventures at the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, in a statement. “Handshake’s approach – expanding access, building student community and support, and showcasing accomplishments beyond college and degree – produces real results, especially for young people from communities that haven’t had access to high quality job and life opportunities.”

Updated to correct the name of the university that the three founders attended.

Recommended

Clipmagix PRO : The MOST Powerful Creative and Captivating Pretty LITTLE Things Creator For HIGH Converting and HIGHLY Engaging Content That Commands Attention So You Can Get Buyers, FASTER. LOWEST One-Time Launch Special Price Today ONLY!

VidPenguin PRO 197 (1-time payment)The first and simplest solution to ranking YouTube videos on page 1 of Google. The best software adn the over 20 hours of the very best training videos on video marketing and video SEO.

Source Code Goldmine Retirement SaleSCGM has sold over $2 million dollars worth of PLR products over 14 packages. Today you can get all of the past SCGM packages - that's 140 products we created in one MONSTER discounted retirement sale.

Revamply PremiumRevamply makes it easy for you to edit any website you own. Its a full website editor that lets you change things rapidly on your page and also give it a full revamp with entirely new elements and colors.

Zamurai PBN BlueprintNew 4-Step Blueprint Reveals How To Rank Simple Videos On Page 1 of Google and Profit $500-$1000 Per Month Each…
New 6-Step Blueprint Shows You How To Rank In Google in 27 days or less Through The Power of Your Own Private Blog Network...Without Having

Viking PLR Reduced Single Back Access 2017Viking PLR is an awesome collection of internet marketing related PLR packages each including a free report, an ebook, and a video course. These packages come with full private label rights and can be rebranded if you so choose. :)

GramKosh Live Suite Pro Ultimate OTO 3World's First and Only All In One Facebook Live Marketing Suite.
Facebook Live Suite Pro covers all possible functionality you can think of to leverage Fb Live for Business.

Leadzbuilder Agency UnlimitedDo You Want To Dominate The Local Search Engine Results For Your Local Business, Product or Service? Now You Can With LeadzBuilder The High Performance Marketing and Landing Page Solution With A Difference!

Viking PLR Reduced Single Back Access 2017Viking PLR is an awesome collection of internet marketing related PLR packages each including a free report, an ebook, and a video course. These packages come with full private label rights and can be rebranded if you so choose. :)

Social Meme KitSocial Meme Kit is a collection of assets and a course on how to make premium engaging memes with Easy Video Lab, Easy Video Lab Lite or any application that works with PNG and MP4 assets. Social Meme Kit includes over 400 creatively themed meme frames, 2

ATL - DIAMOND Upgrade - LITEThe Affiliate Traffic Lab is a 100% cloud based software that creates traffic getting videos that you can rank on Google and Youtube in minutes to get you free traffic, leads and sales.

Mighty Memes AceThe Mighty Memes Ace version supports Facebook and Twitter. Collectively between the two it can support up to 8 profiles. You will get 300 templates and any new templates that are added regularly.You can upload in bulk using CSV with the Ace version. Yo

EverLesson Agency Split Payment versionEverLesson is a Complete online system for managing your entire membership site. It produces the most beautiful, highly profitable membership sites in a matter of minutes. These memberships will keep the members engaged and hungry for more of your product

TV Boss 3 White LabelTV Boss is world’s ONLY platform to let you create and manage
Roku channels for your clients!Having your own Roku TV channel gives you:
- Money. In a click or two you setup the TV advertising.
- Authority. Be the leader in your industry.
- Traffic.